Numerical analysis of a nonlocal parabolic problem resulting from thermistor problem (Q2479466)

The authors study the spatially semidiscrete piecewise linear finite element method for the nonlinear parabolic problem \[ \partial u/\partial t - \nabla \cdot (k(u) \nabla u) = \lambda f(u) \bigg/ \biggl(\int_\Omega f(u)\,dx\biggr)^2 \] in \(\Omega \times (0,\bar{t})\), \(u = 0\) on \(\partial \Omega \times (0,\bar{t})\), \(u(0) = u_0\) in \(\Omega\), where \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^2\), \(\bar{t}\) a positive number, \(f\) and \(k\) given functions from \(\mathbb{R}\) to \(\mathbb{R}\), \(\lambda >0\). This parabolic problem describes the temperature profile of a thermistor device with electrical resistivity \(f\). The full discrete backward Euler method and the Crank-Nicolson-Galerkin scheme are also considered. An algorithm for solving the fully discrete problem is proposed but no numerical results are presented.